ph of one faction over another:
that the simplicity retained in the ancient laws of England, as well as
in the laws of every other country, ought still to be preserved, and
was best calculated to prevent the extremes on either side: that the
absolute exclusion of resistance, in all possible cases, was founded on
false principles; its express admission might be attended with dangerous
consequences; and there was no necessity for exposing the public to
either inconvenience: that if a choice must necessarily be made in the
case, the preference of utility to truth in public institutions was
apparent; nor could the supposition of resistance, beforehand and in
general terms, be safely admitted in any government: that even in mixed
monarchies, where that supposition seemed most requisite, it was yet
entirely superfluous; since no man, on the approach of extraordinary
necessity, could be at a loss, though not directed by legal
declarations, to find the proper remedy: that even those who might at a
distance, and by scholastic reasoning, exclude all resistance, would yet
hearken to the voice of nature, when evident ruin, both to themselves
and to the public, must attend a strict adherence to their pretended
principles: that the question, as it ought thus to be entirely excluded
from all determinations of the legislature, was, even among private
reasoners, somewhat frivolous, and little better than a dispute of
words: that the one party could not pretend that resistance ought ever
to become a familiar practice; the other would surely have recourse to
it in great extremities; and thus the difference could only turn on
the degrees of danger or oppression which would warrant this irregular
remedy; a difference which, in a general question, it was impossible by
any language precisely to fix or determine.

There were many other absurdities in this test, particularly that of
binding men by oath not to alter the government either in church or
state; since all human institutions are liable to abuse, and require
continual amendments, which are in reality so many alterations. It is
not indeed possible to make a law which does not innovate, more or less,
in the government. These difficulties produced such obstructions to the
bill, that it was carried only by two voices in the house of peers. All
the Popish lords, headed by the earl cf Bristol, voted against it. It
was sent down to the house of commons, where it was likely to undergo a
scruti